Vladimir Rusanov

Vladimir Rusanov

Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov ( _ru. Владимир Александрович Русанов) (November 3 (O.S. November 15), 1875, Oryol - ?) was an experienced Russian geologist who specialized in the Arctic.

In 1909-1911 V. A. Rusanov carried out explorations in Novaya Zemlya. He was helped by Tyko Vylka, his guide, who later became the Chairman of the Novaya Zemlya Soviet.

In 1912 Rusanov had been appointed to command a government expedition to Svalbard to investigate the coal potential (Pinkhenson 1962 p. 489). He sailed from Aleksandrovsk-na-Murmane (now Polyarnyy, near Murmansk) on 26 June on ship "Gerkules" under Captain Alexander Kuchin, Roald Amundsen's South Pole navigator. The personnel consisted of thirteen men and one woman, Rusanov's French fiancée. Apart from Rusanov there was another geologist and a zoologist.

At the end of a very successful summer’s field work, three members of the expedition (the geologist, the zoologist and the ship's bosun) returned to Russia via Grønfjorden in Norway (Pinkhenson 1962 p. 492). The remaining ten, however, without consultation with the authorities in St. Petersburg, set off with Rusanov in an incredibly rash attempt at reaching the Pacific Ocean via the Northern Sea Route. Their ship "Gerkules" was too small for the kind of expedition Rusanov had in mind.

The last to be heard of Rusanov's expedition was a telegram left at Matochkin Sharon Novaya Zemlya, which reached St. Petersburg on 27 September 1912. In it, Rusanov indicated that he intended rounding the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, and heading east across the Kara Sea but nothing was heard from the "Gerkules" thereafter. He and his 11-man team, including Alexander Kuchin, disappeared without trace a year later in the Kara Sea, off the northern coast of Siberia.

In 1914-15 the almost impossible task of searching for Rusanov (as well as for similarly disappeared Captain Georgy Brusilov from another expedition), was entrusted to Otto Sverdrup with the ship "Eklips". His efforts, however, were unsuccessful.

In 1937 the Arctic Institute of the USSR organized an expedition to the Nordenskiöld Archipelago on ship "Toros". Relics of the ill-fated 1912-13 Vladimir Rusanov’s expedition on the "Gercules" were found on Popova-Chukchina Island located at (74° 56'N, 86° 18'E) off Kolosovykh Island in the Kolosovykh group.

A glacier in October Revolution Island, in the Severnaya Zemlya group has been named after Vladimir Rusanov.

Rusanov is dutifully remembered in the city of his birth, Oryol, where street "Ulitsa Rusanova" is named after him. There is also a museum in the house where he spent his childhood and youth at no.43 "Ulitsa Rusanova".

Soviet coal mining on Svalbard began in 1932.

References

* William Barr, "Otto Sverdrup to the rescue of the Russian Imperial Navy".
* William Barr, "The First Tourist Cruise in the Soviet Arctic".
* http://www.polarmuseum.sp.ru/Win/mdates.htm
* http://www.vova.cz/pgs1_a/ark_trilogie_a.htm


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